Wednesday, November 4, 2015

The Good: Good ingredients, Tastes all rightThe Bad: Somewhat expensive, The fruits do not blend effectively with the chocolate.The Basics: ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces chocolate bars are good, but the fruit/chocolate combination is hardly as vibrant as one might hope.

When it comes to expensive chocolates, I often find myself truly split on what to buy and what to review. My instinct when I encounter a pricey chocolate is to stick to things I am biased in favor of in order to maximize my enjoyment (things like dark chocolate mint). The other half of me is tempted to use buying a more expensive chocolate as an opportunity to break out and explore something I wouyld not otherwise try. My purchasing a ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces candy bar was definitely the latter. The ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces is unlike anything I had ever tried and it was very different from the types of chocolate I know I am predisposed to enjoy.

Basics

ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces chocolate bars are 9.5" long by 2.75" wide and vary in thickness based upon how much fruit is embedded in the particular piece. The bars are irregularly segmented, but break apart easily enough to grant the consumer a single serving. The entire bar comes wrapped in a thin plastic wrapper and the bar is packaged in a cardboard sleeve to protect it in transit. These bars are made as a premium chocolate product and are sold as such.

Online of these bars tends to run in the $18.00 range, so I feel very fortunate that I found mine at a discount store for $2.99. The ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces bar is a tough sell for me at the price I paid for it; it is inconceivable that anyone would pay the full retail price for it.

Ease Of Preparation

These are candy, so preparing them is as simple as opening the cardboard and then sliding the chocolate bar out of the plastic sleeve. This is a very textured bar, as the fruit is embedded into the surface of the chocolate, as opposed to sealed into the chocolate. Still, the bar slides out easily enough. The seams between the different segments make it easy to break the bar apart and leave the rest of it intact. There is no grand secret to eating the ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces chocolate bar.

Taste

The ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces chocolates smells powerfully of chocolate and coffee. The fruit does not seem to contribute much to the aroma of the chocolate bar.

In the mouth, the flavor of the chocolate is strong and overwhelms the fruit flavor. This was surprising to me as the embedded fruits do not contribute much to the flavor even when one places the bar fruit-side down onto the tongue. Instead, this is a very dry, dark chocolate bar with a somewhat unsettling texture. . . until one masticates. The only way to unlock the fruit flavor in the ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces chocolate bar is to start chewing it. Then, the sweet and sour flavors of the strawberries and cherries asserts themselves moments before the dry chocolate flavor overwhelms them again. But at least it is more than a texture that way!

The Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces bars have a very dry cocoa aftertaste that lingers on the tongue for several minutes after the last piece is consumed.

Nutrition

These are candy, so they are not particularly healthy. The ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces chocolate bars are not nearly as bad as they could be, especially compared to most mass-produced candies. The primary ingredients are cocoa mass, sugar, and cocoa butter. There is nothing unpronounceable in these candies and the fruit embedded in it is very real and generally unprocessed.

A serving of the ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces chocolate bar is considered three squares (39 g). From three squares, one takes in 200 calories, including 15 grams of fat. There is no cholesterol, no sodium, and 3 g protein in this chocolate bar. Because of the fruit, there is a smattering of Vitamin C (15% RDA), Iron (34% RDA) and Calcium (2% RDA) in each serving.

These are not Vegan-compliant, nor are they recommended for anyone with a nut allergy as they may contain tree nuts, soy, milk, and gluten. They are not marked as kosher, though I'm not sure why.

Storage/Clean-up

The ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces chocolate bars remain fresh for quite some time. Ours did not seem to have an expiration date. One assumes that if they are kept in a cool, dry environment they will not melt or go bad. Given that they are plastic wrapped in a fairly sealed package, it is hard to imagine just what it would take for these to go bad outside melting and refreezing.

As for cleanup, simply throw away the plastic and recycle the cardboard when you are done with the candy bar. Outside that, there is no real cleanup needed, unless one is eating them in a hot environment. In that case, it is likely one would need to wash their hands. If this chocolate bar melts into most fabrics, they will stain.

Overall

ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces chocolate bars have a kind of "insult to injury" thing working against them. They are expensive, so thrifty people will want to savor them. But, to unleash the flavor potential, one has to chew them which makes the candy disappear quicker. As a result, it is impossible to recommend the ChocoMe Dark Chocolate With Ground Cocoa Beans, Freeze-Dried Sour Cherry Pieces, and Freeze-Fried Strawberry Pieces chocolate bars . . . even to people with too much money!